Promises, Promises
by SterlingSuspenders
Summary: He looks like his name: sleek and violent and ugly. He swaggers when he walks, a stiff sway from side to side to side. - A Rick Rape character study


**A/N: I almost didn't post this, because I'm so happy with it I almost didn't want to share it [if that makes any sense at all]-however, my sister encouraged me to, so here it is. This was intended to be a short character study on Rick Rape because his [five minute] character fascinated me, but it grew up into a four page story. Personally, I'm glad it did.**

**But I'm done with my disclaimer. Here you are.**

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><p><em><strong>Promises, Promises<strong>_

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><p>When it was just a choice—just some innocuous little idea planted inside his head—the game didn't seem so bad. And the men with their suits, their contracts and their high dollar pens, they knew exactly what to say: a second life. One where things were easy. A job where you didn't have to think. Promises, promises. It sounded almost good.<p>

And he needed the money. And he'd tried other jobs. And no one was hiring and no one was paying and he wasn't eating. And what had at first seemed like a viable fantasy started looking like the only way out.

And the men and their contracts smiled as they handed him the pen. They promised him happiness. They promised him comfort. They promised him thrills and adventure and confidentiality: things he knows now that can't be promised. The pen trembled as it scratched across the paper. He thought it was from anticipation.

The first day, it felt—fresh. Like dreaming. See, the Society, it was bright, colorful. The people dressed too flamboyant and laughed too loud and chattered too long. Everything was so unreal that it felt almost soft around the edges: glazed over. The Society didn't open with a bang, even if now it's doing its best to end with one. He would just go to work every day and turn his brain off and walk through dreaming. It was comfortable, thoughtless. Easy.

The sex didn't start until the second week. Then the Players realized that Society was good for more than just the basics. Castle had created the ultimate X rated game, complete with real people to live out whatever you want, however you want, as often as you want—and in high definition.

He was just minding his own business: dreaming, like he always did. The taste of her lip in his teeth wakes him up.

And at first, he doesn't understand. He can see his hands gripping bruises into her arms, can feel her under him. But it doesn't feel real, it doesn't—the lines of the game come very suddenly, very sharply into focus.

When she moans, it's just another command. Sharp and pointed: unnatural, wrong. He feels the constriction of his pants, but he isn't aroused. He sees the red rings his teeth leave on her throat. He can taste her, but he doesn't want her. Not like this.

Fear and realization come at once, tangle up in his stomach. He swallows down the knot in his throat and his hands slide up her skirt and he doesn't know her. He doesn't want this. She makes a stiff, staccato buck into his touch and he bucks back—fast, unbridled. Like a dog.

Through this, the wolfish grin he can feel pulling his face never falters. He watches what he can't change.

He takes her: her lips open, her eyes empty.

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><p>He goes home sore and sick and tainted. He clocks out and waits for the dreaming to stop. It doesn't. Instead, the dreaming starts. The world looks soft and out of focus. Not like the memory, which splits through even the pitch black of midnight. The memory of <em>taking<em> her—on the floor, the counter, the bed, against the wall—it weighs down his legs. And he walks, even though his car is right there.

He can't wash her smell away. Two hours scrubbing under his shower head and she's still sweet against his skin. Floral. Not even perfume just... humanity. But it wasn't a human he fucked raw. And he wasn't human when he did it. And he shivers, even though his skin burns pink under the scalding water. He squeezes his eyes closed and wishes it away and it doesn't leave.

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><p>The new username, the latex—they're what greet him in the morning.<p>

Rick Rape. And he knows it isn't over. He knows it's just the start.

And his Player makes sure he lives up to his name—lives up to it in spades.

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><p>It's still another week or two before people really start fighting back. Because, at least in the beginning, the sex was a fad, like a fashion statement. Nondiscriminatory. Of course, then there were standards, even steady relationships. And then he wasn't always wanted. And then he was stepping on toes.<p>

And then he was here—yanking her head up and down in his lap by the hair. Slapping and squeezing and biting. His head falls back.

She bites, while he isn't looking. He _feels_ it. But his Player won't _let_ him let go. Tears well in his eyes and he snarls at her from behind that crooked sneer and fucks her mouth harder.

Her boyfriend—cyber boyfriend, Society boyfriend—finds them, then. And Rick—because he _is_ Rick, now—fights to stuff himself, purpling teethmarks and all, back into his pleather pants. The boyfriend crosses the room in long, automaton strides to snatch him up by the collar. He doesn't start with the face; he's better than that. He forces his knuckles into Rick's gut so he doubles over onto his knees. He kicks, with big, burly boots. He drags Rick up by the hair and he can't help but think back to the woman just beside them. The way he tugged her. The way he hit her.

And then he thinks he deserves it.

The boyfriend hits him. Again and again—his face, his ribs, his gut. His lip splits open—cracking fault lines from some inward tremor. God knows he would be trembling. If Avatars could tremble. And he's done. That's all. No more.

But his Player—he's not done. His Player mouths a proposition that forces itself from his lips. That shit-eating grin is back. It hangs on his face like a prize.

"What do you say you join us?"

It doesn't belong to him, but he says it. The words taste unfamiliar in his mouth.

Without so much as a twitch of the eye, the boyfriend knees him in the groin and he buckles and sees stars. Laying there—staying down—he lets his cheek kiss the floor and it's so much more passionate and intimate than the other embraces he's shared in this place.

The manic smile makes it hard for his lips to stop bleeding. The boyfriend kicks him, once more, for good measure. Then he takes the girl by the arm and leaves.

Then he's alone with the blood and the bite marks and the bruises and the floor.

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><p>Sitting hurts. Peeing hurts. Walking hurts. Some modern artist stopped by in the night to paint purple impressionism all over his skin. When he opens his mouth his lips split back open and he bleeds down his chin.<p>

The creature in the mirror no longer looks human.

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><p>He looks like his name: sleek and violent and ugly. He swaggers when he walks, a stiff sway from side to side to side.<p>

His pants press against his bruises and sometimes he can't even see. He walks—staggers—until he finds a woman in black. He stands up against her and the command comes through. Hard on her thigh, the pain takes his breath away. He pants in her ear and lives up to his name.

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><p>Even in real life making love seems ugly. His arousal never seems his own. He shrinks from touch, shatters a relationship. He gives into temptation and hates himself and no matter how hot the water, he can't wash it clean. No matter how cold, he can't make it leave.<p>

Bruises migrate across his body from week to week. He gets less sleep and more painkillers. His black eyes turn permanent. He has trouble closing his mouth. He's healthy, but broken. Like a horse. He limps through his days.

And Rick Rape gets all the glory.

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><p>Sometimes, there's two girls. Sometimes more. Sometimes they aren't girls. Sometimes they fight back. Never for long.<p>

This time, he brought a rope. He ties the rope fast—fast as he fucks. More rope. More knots. He draws his tongue across it, grinds against it. Everything is fast. Everything is short. Everything hurts. To think he used to find something comfortable about being out of control. The rope-burns that wind red snakes around his body—his wrists, his chest, his thighs—are far from comfortable.

The men and their contracts were right. Adventure. Thrills. Fucking like bunnies.

He goes in and wants to stop. He can't—he's trying, but he can't. And he feels filthy. He hates himself. Really hates himself. Hates his one-click arousal. Hates his tongue as it betrays him: lapping up skin and making him taste. He hates his fingers where they grab and his skin where it burns. He hates the command that tells him to like it.

He screams as loud as he can—but no one can hear what's inside his head.

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><p>The silver teeth make their appearance a little after that. They're a removable customization, but getting them on and off is such a bitch, half the time he comes home and doesn't even bother.<p>

His mouth is even more foreign to him, now. It tastes like sweat and someone else's spit, like skin and metal. It feels... sleek. Violent. Ugly. He tastes like his name.

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><p>He sits in front of the mirror some mornings and tries to smile. A polished, bloodied, wolfish face looks back at him. His lip is twisted—left over from his last rumble.<p>

A rumble that ended with shoulders against the wall—his tongue in someone else's mouth, his hands down someone else's pants.

The smile in the mirror looks the way the sneer Rick Rape always wore felt. That's okay; people don't much use his real name, anymore. He feels like his name.

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><p>The man finds him when he's three or four fucks into his daily routine. The man is big. He shoves Rick's back against the wall and gnaws his way down his neck. It leaves an angry, swollen line that curls around rope burns and "love bites" and hand-prints—from his jaw to his chest. His beefy fingers tug at the latex. And fighting just makes things worse. He feels his heart lurch to his throat, but there's no room for it there with the man's teeth getting in the way.<p>

He flips Rick around and grinds his weight against him, so that his face makes reluctant friends with the paint job. Dread sets in like an old friend. The man wrestles off the latex pants, snapping them against skin as he goes: cherry red welts that rise to the surface and shine on his flesh. He grabs. It hurts. He twists and tugs and leans. His breath comes hot and heady in Rick's ear. His mouth is warm and wet and invasive.

Rick kicks out and the man wrenches his arms behind him and makes a sick joke of his name.

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><p>He doesn't sleep that night. He curls into the covers and stares at the shadow of the wall. He sees himself there: splayed, prone against the plaster. He feels it—again and again and again, pounding. Groping. Pushing—bruising. He coils around his center and cries. The memories make for poor companions.<p>

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><p>Here is where he starts to fall apart. Dark, sleepless circles join the bruises under his eyes. His face goes sallow from not wanting to eat. There's a nothing in his eyes that hides deep down in his head and gobbles its way through his flesh. The trudges to work, sick from malnutrition and heartache. He bounces around Society, has a few fucks, downs a few kegs. He turns alcoholic without ever trying to be and it haunts him on the outside as well.<p>

And he can probably sue, but it's just not worth the effort. To be honest, it's not really worth the effort to get out of bed in the mornings, it's just routine.

Scratch that—it's just a contract.

He raises his glass and toasts the whole fucking world.

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><p>At home, he blows through pack after pack of cigarettes in front of the TV. Frankly, the cigarettes are more interesting. Right now, he has a rock star body: muscle left over from when he was healthy, slender from the food he's not eating, dark from the insomnia and edgy from the drugs.<p>

It's easy to feel small when you're used to platform boots.

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><p>He holds her hips and turns his brain off. He knows what he's doing to her, but honestly?<p>

He just doesn't care.

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><p>His nose won't stop bleeding. It's crooked, now—to match his mouth. The doctors throw around words like "broken". So, he laughs, even though no command comes through.<p>

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><p>The "outside" is really just an inside—the inside of a shitty apartment hardly three blocks from the "inside". It's just as well, because his reflection doesn't look human. His reflection looks like a broken doll. He leans over the counter to laugh at it. He laughs cracks into it with his fists.<p>

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><p>Today, there are no partners. Today, he digs into his latex pants and entertains himself. Words come to life in his throat without ever crossing his mind. He moans and pants and sighs exactly when his Player tells him to: a good little marionette. Today, he grips the part of himself he'd most like to forget and hates himself the most. Today he is his name and that's all there is to it.<p>

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><p>In a perfect world, he might say he's still fighting. He might say that what he does when he's out of control still horrifies him. But the world, of course, is far from perfect. And, really, Society is the only world he knows. And being in control is so much more difficult than letting someone else take the wheel. And his shifts get longer and his sex count gets higher and he just doesn't give a fuck. And the men and their contracts are laughing somewhere, making money off the apathy inside his head.<p>

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><p><strong>AN: Okay, so, I'm not the type to ask for reviews but I would honestly LOVE to know your opinions. If you have the time, please pop a review my way, thanks! And I hope you enjoyed! 3**


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